... taking the high road ...

... going on tour can be a romantic ideal ... when I hear of a band going on a "road trip" f'rinstance, I visualize Greyhound busses, twanging gee-tars, and Allman Brothers look-alike roadies hauling drum kits from venue to venue ... variants on this theme display some consistencies whether the band is country-rock, roots-rock-reggae, Def Jam or post-Mickey Mouse Club ... today however, a "road trip" rarely resembles that cliche, and the term is just as likely to conjure an image of Thelma and Louise encountering Brad on a middle-of-nowhere stretch of interstate, or the "Hangover" cast setting out for hi-jinks in Las Vegas ...

... nor, in actuality, is this imagery confined to the music world or the silver screen ... "road trip" has come to signify a journey away from home-base for any length of time, be it hours, days, weeks or more, regardless of mode of transportion ... as recovering Arizona congresswoman Gabby Gifford's husband, Mark Kelly, prepares for his historic penultimate Space Shuttle mission I'm not certain if astronauts qualify as yet, but the term is inclusive of cross-country walkers, distance cyclists and frequent flyers ...



... sometimes a "road trip" can take you to the next town over but when planes are involved that could just as easily be the next country or hemisphere ...the latest Ackeelover Chronicles excursion spanned the longitude between antipodean Australia and the capital of Canada with touchdowns en-route, tailor made for eventual blog fodder if the internal clock ever readjusts ...

... exciting? ... yes, but air travel sure ain't what it used to be ... pat-downs, x-ray technologies, sniffer dogs, laptop swabs, fingerprints and infra-red "eye-D" retinal scans all contribute to travel safety but have the cumulative effect of dragging out a "road trip" ... promisingly, new TSA regulations propose reform for passengers, who, having paid to check-in a single suitcase, find no recompense even when that very valise vanishes after weather SNAFU's a connection at Chi-Town's mazy O'Hare ... 

... during these travels I came upon a little bit o'trivia claiming that the average number of people airborne over the U.S. in any given hour numbers 61,000 ... same time I saw headlines regarding an air-traffic control gaffe causing the diversion of a plane carrying Michelle Obama and Jill Biden ... it seems the FLOTUS flight was too close for comfort to a military cargo plane approaching Andrews airforce base ... after a contemplative pause to take in the potential horror of that averted disaster I weighed it all against my own aborted landing experience ... juuust before the too-late point ... when the pilot saw another plane still occupying our San Juan runway ...

... on the return itinerary, the second pass by this almost-a-state (can you imagine if Barack Obama was born here?) was more direct ... flying over Puerto Rico (or in fairness, anywhere) is quicker, slicker and safer than stopping there ...

... not all road trips conclude safely at the original point of departure, ask Buddy Holly, Otis Redding, Lynyrd Skynrd or Aaliyah ... with nineteen take-offs and nineteen landings crammed into a five-week period, it's impossible not to feel sometimes like you're playing the odds when you take the "high road", but, make it back in one piece with experience enhanced and memories intact, you can feel like a sweepstake winner ...

... the King wears Bermuda shorts ...

... a casual linear approach to directions can locate everywhere east of west, and north of what's to the south, on this spherical planet ... 'til you actually come full circle ... therefore, all points on the globe, save both absolute poles, are co-ordinates of those four cardinal points, North, South, East and West ...

... I've just returned from the only place I can think of right now which to tends to defy this imperative, as it has popularly come to be regarded in terms of only three ... sitting in mid-Atlantic isolation is the anomalous island of Bermuda, the apex of a fabled triangulation of marine mystery ... culturally, this land is a tryptych of sorts, drawing with almost equal weight from cultures to its east, west and south, a trident of British, American and Caribbean sensibilities blending into a unique identity ...

... like other island societies, survival in the swim of world dynamics hinges on external lifelines, and more than most, Bermudian experience reflects a binding assuredness instead of centrifugal fractiousness ... to my eye, the monarchic allegiances of Bermuda's colonial heritage and the New England habitude of North American privilege sits in relatively comfortable co-existence with the influence of Afro-indenture that gives these parts so much of its color ... the sum of such parts is invariably greater than the whole and modern Bermuda stands on this platform, a remnant outpost of empire owning its strands of history and despite size, unapologetically claiming nationhood ...

... every year for the past fourteen, Bermuda has hosted BIFF, an International Film Festival welcoming cinematic expression from every worldwide source, in programmes reflective of a diversity beyond the primary trifecta of their own cultural wellspring ...

... it doesn't feel as long, but it's been three years since the 11th annual BIFF when Frances-Anne Solomon screened her film A Winter Tale to a rapt full house at Speciality Cinema in Hamilton, and now I find myself invited to serve as a juror ... BIFF 2011's cadre of short films, numbering thirty-two in all, was the largest selected for competition at this small yet important contributing festival for the gran'daddy Academy Award in this eclectic category ...

... our panel of jurors represented various perspectives and areas of expertise ... working with them was a pleasure, effectively lowering my degrees of separation vis-a-vis prominent names like Scorsese and Tarantino and projects like "48 Hours", "The King's Speech" and "Inglourious Basterds"... we divided handily into groups focussed on documentaries, features and short films, the latter category becoming the purview of publicist, producer and performer, an eager troika charged with watching all competition shorts to choose one for the jury prize ...
 

... as to be expected, or hoped for, the creativity in competition was broad in scope, artistic in presentation, tantalising to the imagination and culturally inclusive, with a dizzying array of footage all seeking to be memorable in abbreviated time ... extensive deliberation and democratic decision-making awarded the prize to super-concise storytelling in the form of a clever four minute Spanish film by Albertto Dorado called "Lost" featuring a Somalian plotline, an eight year old boy and music-over-the-credits from hot Somali-Canadian rapper K'naan ...

... there could only be one winner but in a dream world I would be King and decree all who deserve a prize to receive one ... Carlos Castineira, also of Spain, should hold on to hope for his powerful film "Easy Money" in case I ascend to the throne, as should Italy's Massimo Cappelli for his classy "41" ... two efforts out of the U.K., Peter Cattaneo's charming "Capturing Santa" and a sexy fifteen minute romp entitled "An Act of Love" by Edward Dick, would be rewarded for levity amid the de rigeur darker themed offerings of necrophilia and pedophilia ... and, were it not for a brief moment of confusion near the end, which I'm willing to consider was my own dim-switch kicking in, I might have pushed harder for Pierre Ferriere's watchable leading actress in "The Story of My Life", a riveting six minute French film ...

... this jewel of a Film Festival keeps a down-to-earth profile, not to suggest a paucity of boozy parties and hors d'ouvres between programming ... you may assume that ... but I saw cool features and documentaries, met some fascinating folks-in-flicks and had a heartfelt reunion with an old high-school friend who will henceforth lead the campaign for my coronation and act as aide de camp cum Lionel Logue ... for return payment in kind ...

... along the way I learned that the critical measure regarding Bermuda shorts is that they fall two inches above the knee ... someone should make a film about that ... I'd vote for it ...

... meltdown mash-up ...

... "Bless my eyes this morning, Jah sun is on the rise once again, the way earthly things are going, anything can happen" ...
- ("So Much Trouble In The World" - Marley)

... by now readers of this blog will be familiar with my conviction that there's never a bad time to reach for a Marley lyric to support a thought ... Bob Marley tailored his songs around specific concerns but also for universal applicability and while he never actually used the word "meltdown" in song or, to my knowledge, interview, recent events may very well have given him opportunity to do so ... for sure there's plenty occasion these days to employ the term ...

... the earthquake/tsunami double-whammy in Japan, as if it isn't catastrophic enough in terms of loss of life and damage, is precipitating crises at several nuclear facilities, feeding fears of Chernobyl-style reactor meltdowns of massive consequence ...

... "in this age of technological inhumanity, scientific atrocity, atomic mis-philosophy, nuclear mis-energy, it's a world that forces lifelong insecurity" - ("Survival" - Marley) ...

... the growing challenge to the autocratic status-quo in the Arab world is widely characterised in Western media as systemic meltdown but is probably more akin to a populist derma-peel than a grasp at Washington or Westminster-style democracy ...

... "every man got a right to decide his own destiny ... so arm in arm, with arms, we'll fight this little struggle ... soon we'll find out who is the real revolutionary" - ("Zimbabwe" - Marley) ...

... collective unrest or act of God doesn't hold a monopoly on the phenomenon of meltdown, in fact it is just as likely, perhaps moreso, for any given individual to manifest this state through uncontrolable anger, psycho-chemical breakdown or both, as in the case of one sick cyber-stalker who I've had to report to police ... then there's the force majeure called Teflon Charlie ...

... with Charlie Sheen's dramatic severance from the Two and a Half Men TV sit-com keeping news cycles distracted, all the apocalyptic internet chatter around the end of the Mayan calendar in 2012 and the looming fly-by of the asteroid Apophis, you'd think we have enough cataclysm to contemplate ... not so ...

... you may have heard of Betelgeuse, one of the brightest stars in the night sky, it's said to be close to burnout, soon to collapse on itself in a showy, stellar meltdown known as a supernova ... the dying star is considered old for its type and could stage this spectacular exit tomorrow, or in a gazillion tomorrows, but in the context of our universe, that means soon ...

... Marley, in the astral gleam of stage lights, represents a supernova in the musical firmament ... acceptance of the supreme authority of nature is central to Rasta spirituality and is perhaps the best prescription for dealing with meltdowns ...

... "have no fear for atomic energy, 'cause none a dem can stop the time" - ("Redemption Song" - Marley)

... interestingly enough, I journey to Australia in a matter of weeks at the kind invitation of the Supanova Pop Culture Expo ... I'll see Brisbane where cyclone Yasi wreaked havoc only a month ago ... a Jamaican Down Under, like Bob in '79 ...

... "Jah love, Jah love protect us" - ("Positive Vibration" - Marley)

... my kingdom for a newspaper ...

... aah, the curse of the conflicted ... it's a strange feeling to be pining for Canada in February, and doubly incongruent to do it from sunny Caribbean shores, but it's been a long time since a full edition of the Globe And Mail broadsheet landed on my seaside lap ... so try to look past the gentle surf and beckoning turquoise with me, to see this single-day time capsule from my removed island vantage ...

... there I read, warm in my geographic region-of-origin, wistful over that frozen-but-thawing adopted homeland and generally rapt at current events through yankee-eye-view media out of the influential U.S. confederation 'twixt right-here and up-there ... synchronicity with Canada is elusive despite television, fibre-optic cables and wireless internet signals delivering the world to me, but it's pleasantly surprising to approach it via the tactile immediacy of a traditional print format ...

... yeah, I know it's just a newspaper but it's as if the Globe editors did my web-surfing for me ... page one News spoke to a stereotype, or reflected a truth, depending on your interpretation, by reporting on the concussive prerogative that is hockey at home ... inside, the Editorial opined on the persistent immigration discourse, unsurprisingly perhaps, since this is a nation where a full third of the population was born elsewhere ... Op-Ed gave equal ink to domestic and foreign, reflecting a Maple Leaf penchant for collective equanimity ...

... advertising provides a familiar constant, with full-margin plugs for Dodge Caravans or a new Toyota Corolla, and the "field tested" alternate Canadian national emblem, "Rootsy LaBeaver" (my coinage - bilingual pronunciations encouraged), anchors the full-color back page ...

... de rigeur anticipation of a newlywed Royal Couple offsets palpably mid-Atlantic coverage of Arab popular uprisings and gives way to Books, Berlin Filmfest and Bieber in the Arts section ... before the extra-crisp white stock of the Life pullout offers up opulence and a snowy snapshot that teases the winter polarity dormant in my sense memory ...

... from here, Canada sits like a reassuring beret on the head of a rakish sentry ... swag and intemperance can manifest above the US/Canada border too, but y'know 'ow it go, perception precedes truth in most cases ... just like the Caribbean is supposedly about sand, coconuts and snorkeling instructors who also DJ, so too is The Great White North pegged as a land of glaciers, polite mounties and the migratory Canada Goose ...

... this newspaper confirms some truth about Canada but other realities spilleth over ... continuing, Toronto sports reporters tell of mega-gates for Mixed Martial Arts events, a b-ball boo-bird return for ex-Raptor Chris Bosh and a detailed half-page report on Europe's Arsenal vs Barcelona soccer fixture to feed my footie fetish ... the closing of Spadina's Magder fur outlet, champion of Ontario Sunday shopping, was a local footnote signalling a passage of time rather than doomsday, if the tone of "structural realignment" in the Business section is anything to go by ...

... I'm going to presume there wasn't much news fit to print west of the Alberta oil sands and leave that void for another day, or whenever a Vancouver Sun falls on my head ... meanwhile, in this part of the world scarce newspapers serve on as incubatory wrapping for ripening mangoes and papayas ... the subtext is implicit, Canada can be cold and icy but also nurturing at heart ...

... the "A" in Antigua ...

... fortunately for humans, our properly functioning brains being of infinite potential, tend to operate in a mode of information-acquisition from birth to death, created as we are with pristine and curious tabula rasa in our crania ... individual and collective intelligence over lifetimes and generations offset knowledge-deficit through accumulated experience ... the learning is perpetual, sometimes frustrating, testing of faith and concepts of infinity, and still the (human) race doesn't ever quite get to the place I'll just call "there" ... even with the drugs ...

... on the brighter, lighter side, the yet to be informed portion of the brain will consciously or subconsciously head for the higher state we've come to identify as "imagination" ...

... my imaginations were aroused last week with the juxtaposition of Russian oligarch Andrey Melnichenko's avant garde yacht, designed by Philippe Starck, with the scrubby hillside backdrop and colonial stone ruins of Rat Island in Antigua ...

















... as I understand it, this is the site of one of Antigua's oldest colonial defenses in what became a strategic outpost for the proprietary British Royal Navy in service of the New World (order) colonial aspirations of the times ... the hillock in the inner harbor at capital town St. John's, which featured four cannon and barracks for a regiment in the early seventeenth century, isn't an island in the strictest sense, being connected to the main island by a narrow causeway resembling perhaps ... a rat tail ...

... Dr. Evil meets MI5 in appearance, this unique gigayacht might have changed the course of history had it stopped in for refueling three hundred and fifty years ago ... I suspect it would fare worse against cannonfire amidship, in multiples of four no less, than against a modern satellite grid guiding cruise-missiles ... any shout of "avast ye landlubbers" has no frequency-band or equivalent and may confound operators of the onboard navigational systems ... even the name of the interloper, the single letter "A" displayed only on the stern, would arouse sentries on the lookout for marauding fleur-de-lys ... (though personally Phil, I'd have gone sans-serif, but wha' do I know?) ...

... Antigua's geo-trigonometry, like that of Bermuda where "A" is registered, is currency on maritime maps and seafarers of all sorts pass though here ... Rat Island, which now hosts the commercial wharves where "A" tied up, must have seen 'em all come and go over the years ... I can't tell you the going exchange rate between rubles and doubloons but, if it costs a million and a half US dollars to fill the fuel tank (at pre crisis-in-Libya oil prices), that cargo-weight in gold bars, jewels and thick, heavy old-time coins would sink anything that floats, I imagine ...

... everliving Legend ...

... this is the thirtieth year since the untimely passing of Bob Marley in May of 1981 ... had he lived to this February 6th he'd be marking a sixty-sixth birthday and the unanswerable questions, as to how his musical art shoulda-coulda-woulda evolved, presumably wouldn't have to be asked ...

... it could be argued that death hasn't slowed Marley down much, even though his dependable output of new music was no longer possible after the sessions that became the LPs "Uprising" and the posthumous "Confrontation" ... Bob, in his performing days, passionately making music, was every inch a live wire, his concerts always giving of his soul, making it less likely that mortality would be more than a minor limitation ...
 

... these thirty years, come to think of it, could be just the proof our world needs that there is indeed an afterlife ... Bob must be working hard in Zion because the fruits of his labour still manifest with metronomic consistency ... the proliferation of his image keeps his work top of the mind as everyone who ever took a photo of him or with him is proud to show it in public ...

... the family franchise could not want for a more solid cornerstone ... Bob Marley's image is globally prominent and versatile enough to be embraced by upscale urban couture and the T-shirt vendor at bend down plaza (a humorous Jamaican term for ... sidewalk merchandising) ... there is no built-in obsolescence because of the strong Rasta alliance to cultures of struggle as pioneered by the Soul Rebel on world stages ...
 
... Bob then, has become the pan-cultural face of a people straddling past, present and future ... if there's doubt, just reference the authority of his back catalogue, the ubiquity of his internet footprint, the emulation by his progeny and the testimony of his broad range of admirers (there are even Bluegrass and Bossa Nova tributes to his Reggae canon) ... the exploits of his several sons speak for themselves and his daughters hold it down too ... word that Cedella, the eldest, will be designing Puma athleticwear for Usain Bolt to wear in 2012 is yet another mouthwatering Marley prospect ...

... yours truly was blessed to attend two concerts by BMW, one of the 1977 London dates at the Rainbow Theatre, and a one-off at the acoustically unsuitable New Bingley Hall in Staffordshire, England the following year, which was more of a love-in-graced-by-the-guru than a music event ... for me these experiences, and a collection of Marley ephemera, buttress an undying regard for the lessons of his life and its ripple effects ... sufficient to underline Bob's honest capacity to enlighten and entertain at once ...

... the catch-all label "icon" can be over-used but in Bob Marley's case it can't convey every dimension ... I guess "Legend" comes closest ... it is, appropriately, one of Bob's nicknames and the title of the distilled greatest-hits collection found in every home ... this year's official release of the final concert of Bob Marley and The Wailers, a September 23rd 1980 Pittsburgh show, is titled "Live Forever" ... my sentiments exactly, Happy Birthday Bob ...

... Freedom for the reader ...

... the reader made short work of last year's hot bestseller and suspects, in the imaginative way the mind operates when the clever-cortex is activated, that if Jonathan Franzen had been born say, a beaver, his talents would have led him to build a dam colossal enough to re-route the Potomac ...

... environmentalists would make pilgrimages for academic observation and satellites would transmit infra-red imagery for news-channel telestrators ... Jonny Beaver would trigger an eco-event and media sensation simultaneously, cause celebre for The Nature of Things ... instead, God gave Franzen a pen, and judging by the protracted detailing in this latest novel Freedom, more than one replacement ink cartridge was bestowed on him too ...

... of course, the reader concedes, in this iPad and keyboard era it's nigh unto impossible to find ink cartridges if you need to replace them, but he'll keep the pen and ink metaphor to sub for laptop and RAM ... suffice it to say, the result is a comprehensive work of modern fiction, prolific with vivid characters who are all fascinating in their ordinariness and riveting in their familiarity ... an exercise in guiltless literary voyeurism, difficult to put down or look away from ...

... it proves less difficult to remove the cottage-country slip cover to proclaim FREEDOM in bold silver letters from the book spine ... "when is Martin Luther King Day?", comes the overheard whisper from somewhere over there as the hefty, black hardcover holds steady at optimum distance from the reader's bespectacled face ... a slight torque on the little word "is" implying something more than the question ordinarily might convey ...

... in fact, there's no call to mention MLK ... the reader's expectation of a civil rights angle, given the connotative associations of the title with themes of struggle, proves way off the mark ... but, there is civic passion in the prose and redemptive realism to the relevant narrative, held aloft by contemporary dialogue, believable character development and honest airing-out of other peoples personal struggles ...

... Walter and Patty Berglund and Richard Katz are not perfect people, in the same way the reader is not, nor you, or you ... or Bono or Princess Di, or Jonathan Franzen ... but the yin and the yang of each fictional life is laid out here across the long chapters, illuminating individual and intertwined storylines to support the contemplative hypothesis that no-one is all good or all bad except Bernie Madoff (who, in fairness, isn't mentioned either) ...

... Franzen completes the pastiche by tracing both male and female psychologies across generational lines - what a concept! - to follow relationships between adults and their offspring, evolutions within friendships and marriages and to see how the dance of life can wheel and turn from waltz to rhumba to tap to freestyle and back, over time, without missing a beat ...

... in the 1972 Jamaican film The Harder They Come there's an aha moment for Jimmy Cliff's character, Ivan, wherein he casually coos "revolutionary to raass" when he recognizes the potency of his exploits ... and, while "revolutionary" is the kind of broad stroke Franzen eschews in his writing, and avoids in his self-promotion, this is exactly how I imagine he's feeling these days as a Katzian figure on the cover of Rolling Stone! ... well okay, it's a TIME magazine cover, but that gives him rockstar balls to dangle like Stephen King or Norman Mailer ... or Richard Katz ...

... "aw shit", the reader mumbles, noticing the reference to his own thoughts in a too-long sentence in the preceding paragraph, effectively outing himself as this writer ... then again, like some twists-of-fortune in the novel, this is forgivably predictable ... "so sue me," but don't judge me for bitin' the guy's style, it's intended to flatter, and I'll take the largesse just in case the Freedom Road to Oprah's attention is (no torque applied) paved with Middle American philosophy, soft sell and third-person syntax ...

... orchid obituary ...

... when I wrote of her gerberas, no sign then to know

of approaching energy-shift, at the yard where they grow ...

but alas, one of those incontrovertible facts is,

sadly true what they say about death ... and taxes ...

... still, I know that blessed garden will continue to thrive,

the orchids alone will keep Joyce's spirit alive,

'cos that's another fact about this life that we're given,

it counts when you make beauty while your being is livin'.